Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal

Shades of Milk and Honey (Glamourist Histories, #1)

by Mary Robinette Kowal

The fantasy novel you've always wished Jane Austen had written "Shades of Milk and Honey "is exactly what we could expect from Jane Austen if she had been a fantasy writer: "Pride and Prejudice "meets "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell." It is an intimate portrait of a woman, Jane, and her quest for love in a world where the manipulation of glamour is considered an essential skill for a lady of quality. Jane and her sister Melody vie for the attentions of eligible men, and while Jane's skill with glamour is remarkable, it is her sister who is fair of face. When Jane realizes that one of Melody's suitors is set on taking advantage of her sister for the sake of her dowry, she pushes her skills to the limit of what her body can withstand in order to set things right--and, in the process, accidentally wanders into a love story of her own.

Reviewed by wyvernfriend on

5 of 5 stars

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This book hit a very good sweet spot for me and sucked me in, hook, line and sinker. I want to purchase my own copy to reread and the series is going to be high on my wishlist.

This is a romance, a story that feels like a Jane Austen Novel but with added magic. A magic of illusion, glamour. This magic is something pretty trivial, it creates an illusion of movement in pictures, a picturescape to accompany music, allows a dress designer to show a customer what the dress would look like when complete in miniature, serves as an alarm for a hunter. Small things. It's considered a skill all accomplished women should have, and uses fabric-like language to describe it.

Jane is an accomplished weaver of glamour, she has resigned herself to spinsterhood as she's twenty-eight and plain. Her sister has more prospect of marriage than she does and she is content with that. However she finds herself caught up in a situation that requires her to push herself to her limits and along the way finds that maybe, just maybe, she might be able to find love.

This drew me in and kept me reading. I sincerely didn't want to leave it until I finished it and look forward to some day re-reading it. The characters came across as if they had stepped out of a period fiction of the regency and had comfortably settled into this one. It just didn't misstep for me at any stage and this one will go on my favourites shelf on book sites.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 11 January, 2013: Finished reading
  • 11 January, 2013: Reviewed